1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a performance apparatus and an electronic musical instrument, which generate musical tones, when held and swung by a player with his or her hand.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic musical instrument has been proposed, which comprises an elongated member of a stick type with a sensor provided thereon, and generates a musical tone when the sensor detects a movement of the elongated member. Particularly, in the electronic musical instrument, the elongated member of a stick type has a shape of a drumstick and is constructed so as to generate musical tones as if percussion instruments generate sounds in response to player's motion of striking drums and/or Japanese drums.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,480 discloses a performance apparatus, which is provided with an acceleration sensor in its stick-type member, and generates a musical tone when a certain period of time has lapsed after an output (acceleration sensor value) from the acceleration sensor reaches a predetermined threshold value.
In the performance apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,480, generation of musical tones is simply controlled based on the acceleration sensor values of the stick-type member and therefore, the performance apparatus has a drawback that it is not easy for a player to change musical tones as he or she desires.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent No. 2007-256736 A discloses an apparatus, which is capable of generating musical tones having plural tone colors. The apparatus is provided with a geomagnetic sensor and detects an orientation of a stick-type member based on a sensor value obtained by the geomagnetic sensor. The apparatus selects one from among plural tone colors of a musical tone to be generated, based on the detected orientation of the stick-type member. In the apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2007-256736 A, a tone color of musical tones has been decided based on the direction in which the stick-type member is swung by a player, that is, at the time when the stick-type member is swung by the player.